Biblical Hebrew Forum

["K Randolph" <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Dave and Gabe:
Both of you are making an assumption that the property that Jacob took is
land. But I understand it that the Amorite in question was Laban, his uncle
and father-in-law, and the property was his wives, children and livestock,
as mentioned in Genesis 31:26. Therefore the connection with the town of
Shechem is completely spurious.

Karl W. Randolph.

On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 11:46 AM, <dwashbur AT nyx.net> wrote:

> On 13 Oct 2008 at 10:53, Gabe Eisenstein wrote:
>
> > If you are saying that the text has some different location in mind,
> > which Jacob took by force, I find that very implausible. It seems much
> > more likely that there are simply different traditions about Shechem.
>
> So let me get this straight: you're saying that, on the basis of nothing
> more than verbal
> similarity between a "shoulder" of land ("mountain-ridge" as Holladay
> glosses) and the
> name "Shechem," we're supposed to posit that some different tradition, in
> which Jacob took
> the town by force with his "sword and bow," somehow got stuck into just
> this one statement
> and then promptly vanished again, never to be seen in any ANE literature
> again.  And you
> find this more plausible than the idea that Jacob is talking about an
> unnamed piece of land
> that he actually did take by force, which the text plainly says is the
> case.  Does that about
> sum it up?
>
> Dave Washburn
> "I'll hold the nail.  And when I nod my head, you hit it with the hammer."